This is not a suggestion to realize ASAP, it’s just an idea for developers if they will ever consider making a new race with brand new ships.
Aliens, an unknown, yet not named race that came from beyond the explored space is known mainly for their ships; living, sentient and fully organic. Nobody knows if the race consists only of ships or there are some humanoid creatures behind it all. It’s all just for You to discover…
If the player wishes to obtain an alien ship, they have to go on a PvE mission for ranks 13-15 where they fight against an alien dreadnought. If the human squad succeeds, there is a 20% chance for them to find a dormant alien ship (not a part of the looting). If they find one, the player with the highest score gets it first (if he meets the requirements). That player has a choice if he wants to take it or not. If the player doesn’t take the ship (either because requirements were not met or because he didn’t want it), the next player at the score-table has turn. This process continues until someone takes it or the last player can’t/refuses to take it.
The alien ship can be obtained if following requirements are fulfilled:
1. The player has reached reputation of rank 15 with one of the human races.
2. The player has 100 artifacts available.
3. The player has 200.000 credits available.
Reputation is needed for the race’s permission to take the ship, artifacts are needed to capture the ship by a secret scientific method and credits are needed for making the ship viable to host a human pilot.
When the player has the ship, what’s next? Next is the upgrading system. Those ships don’t work like classic human ones; they are evolving from lower rank to another. Differences between the first ranks may be just slight, but at higher ranks the differences are massive. Therefore, when you upgrade a ship, you can’t downgrade it (here comes another opportunity to implement real money payments).
Their ships are in general fast and agile, even their frigates are more nimble than the human ones. They don’t have much hull strength (since they are organic). Due to this, they have developed pretty strong shields with a nice regeneration rate. Those ships also have a lot of energy, but the refill rate is poor.
Ship classes is another part. They still have same classes as the human ones, but to make them more unique, they have different sub-classes:
[ship class]: [ship sub-class] - [special module and its effects]
Interceptor: Time Manipulator - Time Lapse (after charging time, the ship appears at the place where it was seconds ago creating a wormhole with two ends; first at the place of charging and second at the place of appearance, this wormhole lasts for a few seconds and any interceptor or fighter that enters this hole is instantly transported to another end, damaging frigates too close to these holes)
Interceptor: Charger - Death Sentence (ship accelerates during the charging time and after the charge time, the ship heads towards a locked target with a half-warp speed until they collide; if this ship has less than 10% shields, the module works as a suicidal tool, ramming the enemy destroying itself in an explosion leaving an acid cloud behind, harmless to shields but destructive to hulls)
Fighter: Living Gunship - Overpower (ship goes into an overpowered mode during which the main gun does more damage, has higher rate of fire, the ship moves and rotates faster but at the cost of decreased shield regeneration, decreased hull resistances, increased recharge times and afterburner drains more energy; if the main weapon overheats but you still keep trying to fire, it slowly but steadily drains your energy; can be turned on and off)
Fighter: Adaptive Missile Cruiser - Adaptive Rockets (ship launches an adaptive, living rocket onto the locked enemy; this rocket does that type of damage which the ship’s hull/shields are least resistant to; it chooses the type right at the moment it is launched, that means if the enemy changes the ship’s resistances, the rocket damage type doesn’t change; charge type module = can be used more times in a rapid succession, then it goes on recharge; one rocket takes a medium period of time to recharge [30 seconds or so], has maximum of a couple of rockets at once; these rockets deal slightly less damage than standard fighter rockets and have higher movement and rotational speed; the module shows you what is the enemy ship least resistant to, shows only one type at once)
Frigate: Regenerative - Protection Drones (after a medium period of time, the frigate launches a living drone dependent on its parent ship with a maximum of 2 drones at once; each of these drones has an organic regeneration “aura” [since these are organic] which regenerates hull and shield strength to all allied ships in a large radius; hull strength regeneration works only on organic ships; this aura is stackable; upon activation of this module, the parent ship starts to drain hull strength from one of the drones to regain its own shields and energy [90% to shields, 10% to energy] until the drone is destroyed)
Frigate: Destroyer - Thermodynamic Cannon (by activating this module, the ship enters a “sniping” mode in which the ship can lock on targets further away than conventional weapons and after a short charging time, the ship can fire a beam of molten metalorganics at a multiple warp speed; does heavy damage, both thermal and kinetic, therefore thermal and kinetic resistances apply there; note that it doesn’t charge before the shot, it charges with the shot [when you hold fire button, it charges for one second and fires half a second right after the charge], recharges a few seconds before you can charge and fire again)
Frigate: Adaptive Defender Ship - Adaptive Barrier / Micro Gamma Burst (passively, the barrier adapts shield’s resistances against the incoming damage types; can divide a certain number of resistance points into all three damage types depending on which has the most devastating effect on the shield; it adapts right after the last hit = it doesn’t divide anything unless you are damaged by any type of a weapon [cool in 1v1, kind of useless in heavy battles where a lot of enemies focuses you]; upon activation, the adaptive barrier is turned off for a short period of time and the ship releases a burst of electromagnetic wave in all directions, inflicting medium EM damage to all enemies in a large radius and paralyze them for a very short duration; recharge time of the gamma burst is multiple times longer than recharge time of the barrier)
Modules of those ships are similar to those for human ships, just in organic version.
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That’s all I could say about this idea. I would like to thank my corporation “Czech Destroyers” for all (although little) support with this idea. I don’t expect all to like this because I know that not everyone likes changes. And as I said at the beginning of this topic, I am not expecting all this and more to be in a next update. I just wanted to give developers some ideas, not that I don’t believe they’re out of ideas, it is just in case they run out of them.
_ Thank you all for reading. _